Follow the Yellow Brick Road

Apart from Facebook, I am totally new to the idea of doing a blog.  But since I have now been diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma (bone marrow cancer), various adventures befall me at times with regards my health that I need to take a great deal of time and effort to explain to everyone sometimes.  Effort better used for healing.

So if you can see this, you are one of the "select few" dearest friends and family who can check up on my progress here from time to time, so we can have better talks when we do connect.  I think it's also true that what you focus on is what becomes your reality, so having to explain what's going on over and over can sometimes reinforce it and make it more difficult to move beyond. 

My oncologist, the wonderful and kind Dennis Willerford (I would want to marry him if he weren't my doctor!), yesterday told me that myeloma patients can live a long time with proper "treatment" (i.e. drugs), so it's not necessarily an immediate death sentence, but some of the twists and turns of this road are going to be a bit rocky at times.  Hence this blog, for updates.

Maybe I should start with the background, for those who won't know and would care to read.  Feel free to skip this.  (Oh dear, this was supposed to be a short post!  But that's the beauty of a blog, you can rave on at length, no need to keep it to quickie sound bytes like on Facebook).

About ten years ago some routine blood tests uncovered an abnormal protein spike in my blood which meant I may or may not develop MM.  The excess proteins were indicative of plasma cells in the bones, cloning themselves and multiplying.  The doctors said not to worry about it at the time, as if it did develop it would likely be in my old age.  So I really didn't pay much attention.  Big mistake.  I should have immediately started working on figuring out how to do detox and nip that thing in the bud.  Dr. Majid Ali states that if you have this diagnosis (MGUS), unless you detoxify your system, it will progress to myeloma.  I wish I had known this some years ago.  (All people with chemical sensitivity should take note of this and be tested for MGUS in case it is developing, and detox NOW.) Unfortunately, it's progressed rather faster than it should and there have already been two disasters from it which landed me in hospital (I'll spare you those details).

I'm doing a huge amount of reading and research these days and would like to put up some links to books and other things which I have found really useful, maybe over on the right if I can figure out how to do that.  Perhaps other people can be helped by that.  It is my sincerest wish that anything I post here may be of use to someone else at some point in their lives.

But I think the time for reading is about over, and it's time to pick a path and put some of the self-help, alternative theories into action.  The sheer amount of information on alternative cancer treatments is a bit daunting.  I feel a little like Dorothy and the Tin Man at the crossroads:  "Some folks take this path . . . but then again others like this one!"  Making decisions can be hard when your life may depend on what you do.  Perhaps I should have called this blog The Yellow Brick Road.

More later.  Blessings to you this day on whatever Yellow Brick Road you happen to find yourself on.